No Future for Luana is considered to have the tightest plot of any of the Judge Peck mysteries, and it probably does so because Derleth stuck scrupulously to the formula for a good mystery outlined in W. H. Auden's famous essay, "The Guilty Vicarage." To begin with, Derleth set the mystery in a tightly "closed society." The only possible suspects are members of a traveling theater company which has stopped briefly in Sac Prairie, and members of Luana's Sac Prairie family to whom Judge Peck is quick to see the victim's resemblance. Derleth allows no opportunity for a casual outsider to have committed the murder.

Both the theater company and Sac Prairie are clearly Edenic settings in which a murder is out of place. The company has visited Sac Prairie annually for years so that its owners are familiar to townspeople and especial friends of Judge Peck. The...